


for all of the things that i've done (i'll be good, i'll be good)

by fbismoak (midwestwind)



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e09 Dark Waters, F/M, Grief, Hurt, Introspection, Post Episode: s04e09 Dark Waters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 22:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14342538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midwestwind/pseuds/fbismoak
Summary: Maybe there’s some sort of deity out there. A creator of some kind, perhaps, but not a benevolent one. Apathetic. That’s how Oliver would describe it. Watching them all run around each other in circles, like distraught ants in a rain shower, searching for something but not sure what.He glares at the stained glass, too unfamiliar with the stories now to know what scene it’s meant to depict. It’s a hospital after all, so maybe it’s a saint of healing. Maybe it’s a god of death.





	for all of the things that i've done (i'll be good, i'll be good)

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn't gonna post this because it's so short but, meh, here we are. a while back i was just thinking about oliver queen and wondering if he'd ever begged and bargained and plead for felicity's life following the shooting. so, then this happened. oops?
> 
> recommended listening (and title from): i'll be good - jaymes young

Oliver Queen is not a religious man.

 

He had been, he thinks, back before. Before Russia, before China, before an island called purgatory that tore any foolish belief in some benevolent god forcefully from his body. Each blow he suffered, each tired night he stumbled back to the foundry after his return, alive but not really, not in anyway that counted. It was all just a reminder that there’s nothing out there, no balancing force to reward the good and punish the bad, no all-powerful lawman to oversee the justice of the universe.

 

That was his job now, at least in his own city.

 

Maybe he’d believed in a god at some point, in the abstract way one believes in ghosts or love as a child. His parents had forced him and his sister to attend mass, but only on certain holidays, and it had stopped sometime in his teens. He can’t pinpoint when. But, he figures, there must have been some level of belief there.

 

Somehow, he finds himself here anyway. Rigid in this uncomfortable pew, staring at the darkened stained glass in front of him. It’s still dark outside, skies black with rain and twilight, and there’s nothing to light the colored glass.

 

This too, somehow, feels like purgatory.

 

“Oliver,” Thea had said, voice stronger than his entire body in that moment. He knew she meant business because she so rarely used his full name. It meant she understood where his mind was at. “It could be hours before we hear anything. Go for a walk or something.”

 

“No,” he’d argued, voice weak with a lack of use. When was the last time he’d spoken before that? “No, I need to be here when she…”

 

He’d trailed off because, when she what? His chest had ached with the thought of finishing that sentence, of trying to find a conclusion that wasn’t overly optimistic. He’d always left the optimism to Felicity and now it was trapped behind operating room doors along with what bruised and fragile heart he has left.

 

“Go,” Thea said again, gentler this time but no less stern. When had that happened? When had his sister become so much stronger than him? She looks him in the eye as she promises, “I’ll be right here.”

 

He understands she’d meant a walk around the block, a breath of air. Something to occupy his weak legs and shaking hands, something to give him something to do. His palms burn with a familiar ache for destruction. What he wouldn’t give for a bad guy in his path right now.

 

Instead, he hadn’t left the hospital. Found himself slipping through the swinging doors labeled ‘chapel’ and sliding into a pew in the back. There’d been an older woman closer to the front when he’d arrived, head bowed as her quiet whispers of prayer filtered through the otherwise empty room. She’d left not long after he’d arrived, leaving him in silence in the house of a god he doesn’t trust.

 

Maybe there’s some sort of deity out there. A creator of some kind, perhaps, but not a benevolent one. Apathetic. That’s how Oliver would describe it. Watching them all run around each other in circles, like distraught ants in a rain shower, searching for something but not sure what.

 

He glares at the stained glass, too unfamiliar with the stories now to know what scene it’s meant to depict. It’s a hospital after all, so maybe it’s a saint of healing. Maybe it’s a god of death.

 

Candles at the front of the small chapel flicker and sway as the air conditioning kicks on. It’s an odd touch in the middle of December. Something about it irritates him, grates at him like sandpaper against the inside of his skin, rubbing slowly against the soft flesh of his organs. A growl rumbles out of him, angry and feral. The monster that shares his body looking to be uncaged.

 

“Hasn’t it been enough?” He growls out, leaning forward and clenching the back of the pew in front of him. There’s no one to direct it at, but if he’s right, an apathetic god would listen in nonetheless. Uninterested in what he has to say, but there because where else should they be?

 

“Everything that you have done to me,” he continues anyway, the words spilling forth, more monster than man. It had always been Felicity who’d kept the beast at bay, so what is he meant to do to sate it now? “Everything I have weathered and taken. Everything I keep taking and accepting. Isn’t it all enough?”

 

The candles continue to flicker as the air continues to move through the room. No one is home in this house, but he keeps on anyway.

 

“Maybe I deserve it,” he admits, shaking his head. His knuckles have gone white where they grip the stained wood in front of him. “Maybe I was meant for it – all the pain and the suffering and the anger. If that’s my lot in life, I can live with it. If I deserve it, then so be it.”

 

Somewhere on the other side of the chapel doors, two people are chatting quietly. If they can hear him, he doesn't care. Maybe they’re used to desperate, angry pleas from desperate, angry men.

 

“But she doesn’t deserve this,” he chokes out finally. The sandpaper grates against his lungs now, makes pulling air into them difficult. Winded in a way he’s never been before. “This can’t be her penance for loving me. Let me pay that price.”

 

Another fan kicks on and one, then two, of the candles flicker out. Oliver watches them, forcing the thought of omens from his mind. The tips of his fingers are starting to lose feeling and he releases his grasp on the pew, flexing the digits and watching color return to them.

 

“Whatever you want,” he sighs out quietly. His hands blur in front of him, moisture building in his eyes and limiting his sight. “Take whatever you want from me. Just, please, don’t punish her just because I am selfish enough to love her.”

 

He clenches his fists again, wishing for the anger to return and replace the dread, the brokenness building in him at the possibility of worst case scenario.

 

“I’ll do whatever you want,” he goes on. “I’ll be better, I’ll weather every storm and I won’t complain. I’ll pay for my sins time and again. Just let me keep her.”

 

His knuckles itch suddenly. Begging for the feeling of flesh and bone caving under them, searching for someone they can make pay. Oliver doesn’t think beating himself up will make that go away. He thinks of John and Laurel in the bunker, searching down leads. Maybe they have something.

 

He lifts himself from the seat, tired of arguing with empty air and dark stained glass saints. No one shares this holy ground with him, no one who is interested in helping him, anyway. Still, he pauses as he reaches the doors of the chapel he still can’t figure out why he’d entered in the first place.

 

“Whatever the price,” he says quietly, steadier with a final plea. “Let me pay it.”

 

And when Felicity wakes up, when she walks again and uses the regained ability to walk away from him, maybe he does.


End file.
